and also Mark Robertson’s merci article - the idea that bankers need to step back and give some serious thought to drastic ‘debt forgiveness’:http://www.mdrobertson.com/merci/

Greed is at the subject of both these two articles above and whilst we have no gripe with profit (we fully subscribe to the triple bottom line philosophy of planet, people, profit) often the greediest are those corporates who have with cunning gamesmanship ensured that government legislation favours them and impedes competition.

In soccer it is called ‘shirt pulling’ in the penalty box!

Those who shout the loudest among these have mostly little or no interest in free markets.

They simply wish to protect their interests through the help of statutory legislation if necessary.

So it was with Apartheid South Africa, ‘bastion of the free market’ … or so they claimed!

Ensuring that labour could not move freely with the infamous pass laws! Artificial suppression of the cost of labour!

Using job reservation to protect the jobs of the race in charge!

Using cultural and other proximity to government as a means to acquire massive state funded contracts.

The corruption stank to the high heavens, all in the name of 'liberty'.

When the Koeberg nuclear power plant was built outside Cape Town, instead of using the market mechanism of the insurance industry in the event of an environmental disaster, the government of that time took on the compensation risk.

In other words it cheated the free market system and fell back on taxing its citizens even more so in the event of a nuclear disaster.

Taking the real free market cost of insurance at that time would have required building the power plant hundreds of miles away from Cape Town in sparsely populated areas.

That is how big businesses and governments all over the world collude, even when they proclaim themselves champions for free markets.

In the interests of ill gotten gains governments allowed for decades widespread pollution by industry, poisoning people and properties.

A purist free market approach would have held the polluters accountable!